The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (25 page)

While Dahmer awaited sentencing, he was again living at his grandmother’s house. He met a black homosexual named Anthony Sears, 24, at a gay bar. As with the others, he offered Sears some money to pose for photos. When they reached Dahmer’s grandmother’s house, Sears was drugged and strangled.
Dahmer had sex with his corpse and then dismembered it. He kept the head and boiled it to remove the skin, later painting it grey, so that, in case of discovery, the skull would look like a plastic model used by medical students. Dahmer saved this trophy for two years, until it was recovered from his apartment on 23 July 1991. Later, he explained that he masturbated in front of the skulls for sexual gratification.

On 14 May 1990, Dahmer moved to another apartment at 924 North 25th Street, Milwaukee, and the killing continued in earnest; the murder rate escalated. Between May 1990 and July 1991, he was killing almost at a rate of one man a week. Most victims were either homosexual or bisexual. The youngest was 14 and the oldest was 31. In addition to his MO for luring and killing, Dahmer had a ritual that he would perform once he had murdered his victims. He would photograph the victims before cutting the bodies open so that he could remember each and every murder. He was fascinated by the colour of the viscera and sexually aroused by the heat that the freshly killed body would give off. Finally, he would dismember the body, photographing each stage of the process for future viewing pleasure. In order to dispose of the bodies he would experiment with various chemicals and acids that would reduce the flesh and bone to a black,
evil-smelling
sludge, which could be poured down a drain or toilet. Some parts of the bodies he chose to keep as trophies – frequently the genitals and head. The genitals he preserved in formaldehyde. The heads were boiled until the flesh came off. Once the skull was bare, he painted it with grey paint to look like plastic. From time to time, he ate the flesh of his victims in the belief that the people would come alive again in him. He tried various seasonings and meat tenderisers to make the human flesh tastier; eating it gave him an erection. His famous freezer contained strips of frozen human flesh. He even drank the blood. He also tried his own form of lobotomy on several of his victims. Once they were drugged, he drilled a hole in their skulls and injected hydrochloric acid into their brains. Needless to say, it caused death right away in a few
victims, but one victim supposedly functioned minimally for a few days before dying.

Dahmer had a brush with the police on 27 May 1991. It has been suggested that if the two officers had been more alert the lives of 12 other men could have been saved. On that night, police received a call to say that a young man was running naked in the street near Dahmer’s house. On arriving at the location, the police found 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone in a distressed state and incoherent. Dahmer was also in attendance. Dahmer told police that they had had an argument while drinking and that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old lover. Despite the teenager’s protests, police allowed Dahmer to take him home. Later that night Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir. What the police missed in the Dahmer apartment bedroom was the body of another victim, Tony Hughes, whose decomposing corpse had lain for three days on the bed.

Monday, 22 July 1991 was the day America would be stunned by Dahmer’s arrest and the revelations that followed. At around midnight, two officers were parked up in their police car when they saw a black man, Tracy Edwards, with a pair of handcuffs dangling from one wrist. Edwards told them that he had gone with a man to his apartment and the man had tried to do things to him and handcuff him. Edwards directed them to the apartment and Jeffrey Dahmer opened the door. He was very calm and rational. He offered to get the key to the handcuffs in the bedroom. Edwards remembered that the knife that Dahmer had threatened him with was also in the bedroom. One of the officers decided to go into the bedroom himself and take a look. He noticed photographs lying around that shocked him: dismembered human bodies, skulls in the refrigerator. When he collected his wits, he told the other officer to handcuff Dahmer and place him under arrest. As the officer tried to handcuff Dahmer, he started to fight with the officer, who finally managed to subdue him. The other officer continued the search of Dahmer’s apartment and came
across a severed head in the refrigerator. A closer examination of the apartment revealed three more heads in the freezer. There was a cooking pot that contained decomposed hands and a penis. On the shelf above the kettle were two skulls. In a cupboard they found containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde. There were many Polaroid photos taken by Dahmer at various stages of his victims’ deaths. One showed a man’s head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean the pelvic bone could clearly be seen.

Jeffrey Dahmer was interviewed, made a full confession and was charged with 17 murders, later reduced to 15. His trial began in July 1992. With the evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer chose to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that his necrophilic urges were so strong that he could not control them. However, the jury found him to be sane and he was convicted of all charges.

He was sentenced to 15 life terms, totalling 937 years in prison. At his sentencing hearing, unusually for a serial killer, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, also saying that he wished for his own death. Dahmer served his sentence at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, where it is claimed that he became more and more religious over time and ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. While in prison, Dahmer survived an attempt on his life. After attending a church service in the prison chapel, an inmate took a razor blade and tried to slash his throat. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds.

On 28 November 1994, he was not so lucky. Dahmer and another inmate were attacked and beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver while on work detail in the prison gym. Much controversy surrounded the decision to allow Dahmer such a privilege as a work detail, as well as the pairing
of Dahmer with Scarver, a man with a history of brutality who was incarcerated for murder. The fact that Scarver was black (and that most of Dahmer’s victims were black) did not escape the notice of critics.

On 26 October 1997, a duck hunter was canoeing near Eureka, California, when he noticed an object that resembled a mannequin on the muddy bank. When he approached the object, he realised that it was the butchered remains of a woman who was missing a head, arms and legs. When investigators arrived at the scene, they saw that the victim’s body had been sliced down the middle and almost completely disembowelled. Moreover, the woman’s breasts had been cut off and there were approximately 30 stab wounds on her body. Because there were no fingers to fingerprint, head, tattoos or unusual features on the torso, investigators were unable to identify the woman. The woman, whose remains were referred to as Jane Doe, was examined by the County Coroner. The coroner determined that she was probably between the ages of 18 and 25, and had a dark complexion. It was believed that the female had been dead at least three or four days before she was discovered. Almost three months later, the victim’s arm and hand were found near a beach. However, the body parts had deteriorated so much that there was no way a fingerprint analysis could be conducted. Investigators believed that her identity might never be known.

In June 1998, another woman’s body was found floating in the California Aqueduct near the town of Buttonwillow. The remains were taken to the Kern County Coroner’s office for examination. During a post-mortem, it was discovered that the woman’s death had probably been caused by strangulation. It was suggested that she had been raped and murdered several days prior to being found. Fingerprints later identified the victim as Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, who had been working as a street prostitute in Las Vegas in the months before her disappearance.

Four months later, on 25 September 1998, another naked body of a woman was found lying in a roadside ditch near Lodi, California. Several items were found lying nearby that were thought to be connected with the woman, including women’s clothing, a bloodied tarpaulin, hair samples, a white plastic bag with the logo of a truck stop titled ‘Flying J’ and some pieces of jewellery. Police investigators hoped that the evidence would provide some clues as to the identity of the victim and how she died. A post-mortem determined that the woman had been dead for several days, due to the advanced state of decomposition. A puncture mark was found on one of the victim’s breasts and there was evidence of suffocation. Police believed the woman was murdered in another location and thrown from a moving vehicle into the ditch. Fingerprints were taken of the victim and she was identified as Lanette White, 25, of Fontana, California. She had last been seen by her cousin on 20 September preparing to go to the shops to get milk for her baby. Friends and family became concerned when she never returned home. The last thing they ever expected was that she’d been murdered.

Patricia Anne Tamez, 21, was a prostitute and drug addict who used to roam the streets for a quick fix or to prostitute herself to support her drug habit. On 22 October 1998, she spent the early part of the afternoon soliciting sex from truckers in Victorville, California. After several hours she got her first customer; a man in a large, black truck pulled up and propositioned her. Following a brief conversation, Tamez got into the truck and drove off with the man towards the highway. The following evening, her naked and brutalised body was found floating in a nearby water treatment centre. When the authorities arrived, they recovered the woman’s body from the water. To their surprise, they realised that one of her breasts had been cut off. It was obvious that she had been murdered. A post-mortem later revealed that the woman had taken a severe beating prior to her death. There was evidence that she had been bound, raped and hit on the head with a blunt object. Moreover, her attacker
had broken her back and severed one of her breasts before he strangled her. During a search of the area, police found items that were possibly linked with the murder, including a bloodied towel, blouse, trousers and a .22-calibre air pistol. Police were not able to locate the victim’s missing breast, nor did they have any clue as to the identity of the murderer. However, several weeks later, the detectives got their big break.

On 3 November 1998, long-haul trucker, Wayne Adam Ford (b. 1961), 36, walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department in Eureka, accompanied by his brother Rod. Rod had spent the previous day trying to convince Wayne to turn himself in to police after he had made confessions of murder to him. Shortly after arriving at the department, Wayne amazed police officers when he tearfully broke down and confessed to murdering four women. His claims were further supported by the contents of a plastic bag found in his pocket during a search. Shockingly, the bag contained the severed breast of Patricia Tamez.

Ford made a full confession and told the police where he had disposed of the body parts of the victims. He confessed that he had picked up the unidentified woman who was hitchhiking near Eureka. He took her back to his trailer, had rough sex with her and then strangled her. It was a process he repeated on three other occasions. However, unlike with the other victims, he dismembered the unidentified woman in his bath with a saw and knives. He said that he dismembered her because it made it easier to dispose of her body. A search of Ford’s trailer revealed even more critical evidence. In the kitchen police found a coffee can that was believed to have contained the unidentified female’s breast. Moreover, a plastic bag with the ‘Flying J’ logo was also discovered, which matched the bag discovered earlier close to Lanette White’s remains. In addition, the freezer in which Ford stored body parts was also found and confiscated.

On 6 November 1998, Ford appeared at Humboldt County’s Superior Court. He was charged with only one count of
first-degree
murder, that of Jane Doe, the unidentified female. The other murders were not committed in the court’s jurisdiction. Therefore, he could only be tried in the counties where the bodies were found. However, a new serial killer law was enacted approximately two months after his arrest, which allowed prosecutors the right to combine a series of murders in different jurisdictions into a single trial if they could prove that they were related. Thus, instead of him being tried for each murder separately in different counties, he would have just one trial for all four murders. Whether the law was constitutionally applicable to his case was the subject of another legal argument. Ford entered a not guilty plea on legal advice on the basis that he was allegedly prevented from having contact with a lawyer from the moment of his arrest to his court appearance. If it could be proven that he had been denied access to legal advice, then his confessions might be rendered inadmissible in a trial. This would turn out to be a difficult obstacle for the prosecution to overcome.

On 6 April 1999, a legal decision was made to have Ford arrested and charged in San Bernardino County for the murders of all four victims. The defence team lost their first battle and faced the prospect of their client receiving the death penalty. That August, Ford was transferred to West Valley Detention Centre in San Bernardino County to await his upcoming trial.

In November 2003, a hearing was held at San Bernardino County Superior Court to determine whether Wayne’s confessions to police were admissible in court. First, his defence team argued that the confessions were the result of unreasonable police actions in the hours and days after Ford surrendered. However, the prosecution maintained that the confessions were legally obtained and that Ford had initially asked for an attorney but later changed his mind.